Walter and Carl Shoop

We lived next to the Vicksburg Grace Brethren Church, which we were members of. We could walk to the church and we lived a Christian life, had our nightly prayers all our lives to live and believe that Christ was the head of the home and our belief. George and some other men had a Bible class at noon at the shop where he worked. He would then tell me all when he came home. So the next year Walter Roy, our first boy, was born. He was a pretty baby, dark hair and blue eyes. He was our joy then. Our yard went downhill so George put a cement wall 4 feet high around two sides. He would work after he came from work and I would hold a lantern for him. Sometimes he would work till midnight. It sure was nice when done. He filled the yard with ground. We then had a nice yard. Next we had a big front porch built and he painted the house, and it was nice. We had a big porch on the back side too. Once when there was a heavy snow on the roof of the back porch, George got up to sweep the snow off. Walter and me ran up the steps inside. We got there just in time to see him slide off. Then we run back down but he landed in a snow pile and wasn’t hurt.

One summer when we had a cow I was feeding her corn chop and getting lots of milk and nice yellow butter, but I gave her too much. One morning when I went out to milk she was laying there still and dead, so I took my baby and went down home crying. As I went to tell my Daddy, well good old Dad he took a horse, went and told George’s Dad, and then took our cow to her pasture field and buried her, so when George came home I cried when I told him. All he said was to be thankful it’s just the cow and not one of the family. When walter was two years we had another boy, Carl Elmer, so then there was four. The summer Walter was four I would give him a small bucket and I would send him thru the field to my home for milk. I would watch from my house till he got there. Then my Mom would watch from their barn till he got home. But he got in the habit of stopping along the way and drinking some of the milk and spilling some too. We had a lot of fun with him about that. But the next winter in February he took pneumonia and died. That was so hard to give him up. His Daddy never did quite get over it. We had two little ones in Heaven. Then we knew they were safe with the Lord. We still had Carl. When he was two and a half years, Thelma Ruth was born, so then we had a boy and a girl.

Thelma Shoop, Carl Shoop, Boyd Ringler, Marie Ringler

We had a good christian neighbor who lived across the road, Mrs. Mentzer. She was my midwife and I could go to her for help if I needed it. Then on the other side of the church Dively’s lived. They had some boys and Carl got to climbing the cemetery fence and going over there. We would have to go and call him. One day his Dad called him and he had some water in a bucket and when he got across the fence his Dad throwed the water on him, and sure scared him. It broke him of running off. Thelma Ruth was two and a half years old and Carl was five years old when Harry Luther was born in November. That was during the first World War days. Everything was scarce and high priced then.